Alone
by CSIGurlie07
Summary: Betrayal and heartbreak, and a love that bound them all together. They were one. Spoilers for Season 6&7, but AU. One-shot.


When they left her Israel, Vance thought the team had finally broken.

Despite what they thought of him, he hadn't wanted it to happen. He hadn't anticipated Ziva remaining behind in Israel.

He hadn't expected it at all.

And he knew who he had to thank for that catastrophic development. Her father, the one and only Eli David, Director of Mossad.

When he made the long distance call to see if Ziva was once again being used her full potential, and all he got was the political _fuck you_, Vance had thought Eli had only killed his daughter.

But in the weeks that followed, the death toll continued to rise, and it was revealed that the true reach of Director David was much more invasive than any of them would have liked to admit.

The Damocles went down in a storm in May, but it wasn't until a month and a half later that the news reached the MCRT. And it wasn't until two months after leaving Ziva in Israel that the team truly fractured.

The first to shatter was DiNozzo.

Vance had always had a slight problem with the agent that never took anything seriously, but there was always a hidden depth to a man who could drown his sorrows to death.

They found him on a bright July morning, almost in August, when he failed to show up to work. His two remaining teammates walked in on him lying sprawled on his couch, bottle loosely clutched in cold limp fingers.

Alcohol poisoning, the coroner—not Doctor Mallard—declared.

They all knew what really killed him.

His death marked the end of the MCRT. After his funeral, Vance put Gibbs and McGee on leave. It might have been the wrong thing to do, because the going only got worse from there.

By the time they found Gibbs, he was in much worse shape than DiNozzo had been.

Because he had been on leave, the neighbors had been the ones to call the cops, when the smell got bad and they got no answer at the door, which for once had been locked.

Vance saw the pictures. He saw the coroner's report—again, not Ducky's—that thoroughly documented the missing back of the old Marine's skull, and the crime scene report that described the blood and brain matter that had been spattered to the hull of his almost finished boat.

The only prints on the gun were his own.

And for the second time in a month, NCIS went to the cemetery to pay their respects. To honor the memory and legacy of a highly skilled agent.

The day after the funeral, Vance had three resignations on his desk.

He'd already been looking for a new agent, scientist, and M.E.

Doctor Mallard was the next to fall, to a heart attack in his sleep.

He was found by the nurse who checked in on his mother every day, and she said he had seemed peaceful. Mrs. Mallard was admitted to an assisted living facility, and last Vance heard she was still asking after her son.

McGee was an accident.

His car hit an ice patch that December, and skidded through the guard rail to plunge into the water below. The witnesses were shocked, but there was no second party, and no one to blame. The car was dredged up, his blue-tinged body recovered for burial.

A single black rose on a diminutive snowy mound.

Vance once heard that loneliness was the most agonizing way to die.

Perhaps that was why they found Abigail Sciuto dead in her parent's home the next May, almost a year to the day since the Damocles had gone down.

They found no cause of death, but Vance knew that it hadn't been natural. Not for a girl who took such good care of herself that she'd never had so much as a cavity. And not for a girl who knew every chemical compound known to man, and a few more beyond that.

She'd taken her life into her own hands, just like her mentor and father-figure had.

When they played jazz after her funeral, Vance knew she was no longer alone.

The next six months were relatively quiet for the agency, and Vance tried not to notice the correlation between the peace and the loss of Team Gibbs—as the agency had dubbed the tight-knit group.

But then the call came in, one call he was not expecting.

There was one more. One of Team Gibbs still lived.

Vance didn't believe it, not until she showed up in his office a week later, fresh out of a hospital in Cairo.

She was nothing but skin and bones and scars. Her left arm was casted from shoulder to fingertip, and her other hand gripped the curve of a cane that helped keep her slight weight off a foot that was just a little too twisted.

So many questions running through his head—where had she been, who found her, how she survived—but only one issued from his lips.

_Why?_

A single word, but no single answer.

She looked at him blankly for a long moment, perhaps trying to puzzle through _which_ why he was asking. Did he want the why she stayed in Israel, the why she'd hidden Michael Rivkin from the agency, or the why she was here and not at Mossad?

He didn't know which he wanted, and he doubted she did either, but she answered anyway.

_To apologize_.

Raspy, thick, mostly a whisper that was almost inaudible it was so weak.

But it was so simple, so honest, that Vance was taken aback. Something she needed to do so badly that she survived over a year of hell in order to return to the one family who had never tried to use her.

Looking at her, Vance knew she didn't care about what their response might be—she only needed to say it, to have them hear it.

Such simple desire—and the one thing she could never have.

It was then that he broke the news to her.

And then he watched her fall away in front of him.

Where an entire camp of terrorists had been unable to succeed, he managed to break whatever spirit she had left in one fell swoop.

He watched as hooded brown eyes turned empty and cold. No tears, no sobs, no pleas or protests…

He wonders if she's forgotten how.

And then, finally, she nods. Once.

Without another word, she rose from her seat and staggered to the door. Vance beat her there in three strides, and placed a gentle, sympathetic hand on her back to steady her. He felt the bulk of the bandages beneath her shirt and pulled his fingers away automatically, though she didn't even seem to notice the touch in the first place.

On the way out he promises protection and shelter, but they both know that none of it matters anymore.

They are intercepted by Dr. Jimmy Palmer—the replacement M.E. — at the elevator.

His flushed cheeks and heavy breathing reveal his sprint from Autopsy, his need to see for himself. He stares for a long moment, and she stares back. Then, tentatively, he reaches out and embraces her, pulling her gently to him as if to draw her into himself.

She receives the hug, her head resting on his white-coat clad shoulder in a moment so tender that Vance can almost see the tears in the eyes of the agents who have all paused their work in the squad room to watch.

When Ziva leaves it is to the silence of an awed agency and the worthless assurances that she'll be taken care of.

Her eyes are dead and even though she walks, Vance knows she too has joined the others.

The family she never allowed herself to have.

Vance returns to his office when the elevator closes on her frail and broken form, leaving Dr. Palmer to stare after her. The MPs call him when their orders are fulfilled, when they have successfully escorted Ziva to the Navy Lodge. She has been provided food and fresh clothes, and is secure for the night.

It comes as little relief.

On a hunch, Vance has the MPs check in on her the next morning. As he expects, she is gone.

The food is untouched and the clothes still in the bag, but she is nowhere to be found.

Simply gone.

He does nothing officially, so as to give her a fighting chance against any who might try and find her. But he tells his agents, domestic and abroad, to keep their ears to the ground. Some days, he is sure the latest dead woman in a stream or public park will be her. But each time it never is, and he is left again to wonder.

The agency whispers when they think he cannot hear—ghost stories that they also keep from Palmer, though Vance wonders if he doesn't experience some of his own.

The most common is the phantom shadow of a tall Marine reflected in the silver interior of the elevator, accompanied by the subtle aroma of sawdust and strong, black coffee.

Sometimes, in the basement, the vibrations of music that cannot be heard are felt in the forensics lab, and late at night the squelch of a flatulent hippo and the muted swish of ice in a plastic cup make the techs feel warm and safe.

And in the MCRT bullpen, the most spectacular tales emerge—glimpses of diligent apparitions tapping silently away on sleeping computers, echoes of barked orders and bantering laughs sounding eerily close.

Some have claimed to see flashes of movement in the shadows when they work late, or have turned around to find a brown-eyed girl looking over the cubicle wall at them, watching over them with a relaxed smile that puts them all at ease.

Every so often, perhaps most inexplicably of all, in the crux of a case the computer across from the team leader's desk would chime without prompting, revealing the results of some hidden, unbidden search matrix that seemed to be constantly running in the background.

Over the years, some of the techs and self-proclaimed geeks would try and figure out how it worked, but none ever solved the puzzle. It was as if the program disappeared as soon as the case-cracking discovery was revealed. And they wondered, but they would never question it, not when it ended up saving lives on more than on occasion.

Visiting colleagues—the FBI, local LEOs, even the occasional CIA—expect them to be scared to work there, if the whispers are really true. But the agents only shake their heads with condescending grins, because visitors don't understand.

The acting MCRT, those brave enough to try and fill the void, they pay their own homage to the fallen. Shouts of the familiar_ gear up_ often find their way through Vance's office doors, and he smiles when he can almost hear the familiar growl of the man who'd tried to fight him at every turn.

It is part of the script now, those two words, and it is not the only thing to have survived their deaths.

Head slaps turn into "Gibbs"-slaps, an affectionate tribute to the team leader that inspired them all. And it is not only the MCRT who uses them… it is soon an agency-wide phenomenon, with some not even comprehending how the swats had earned their title.

When Vance finally retired years later, Ziva still hadn't been found, despite the rumors of having spied her in Europe and around the Mediterranean. They were all false alarms, with descriptions of dark Israeli beauties with cherubic cheeks and pretty eyes. No reports of the scarred visage that had hobbled from the building that day long ago.

But he goes home to his patient wife, happy and content to spend the rest of his years doting on his six grandkids, never once doubting that Team Gibbs was once again whole. It was what they'd been best at, after all.

Through thick and thin, they'd always managed to have each other's sixes.

Gibbs.

DiNozzo.

Ducky.

McGee.

Abby.

Ziva.

Not one of them had ever been alone.


End file.
